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Hume and Spinoza on Emotions and Wisdom1
Willem Lemmens, University of Antwerp

While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone; and death, though perhaps they receive them differently, yet treats alike the fool and the philosopher. Hume, The Sceptic Beatitudo non est virtutis praemium, sed ipsa virtus... Spinoza, Ethics Spinoza and Hume each exemplify a specifically modern version of the classical idea that the practice of philosophy leads to the moderation of mans passionate nature.2 Both integrate this conception of doing philosophy as a search for wisdom, into a science which is in harmony with a modern ateleological worldview. But they diverge fundamentally when they spell out how exactly philosophy can lead to wisdom and in what this wisdom consists. In his Ethics, Spinoza presents the study of the relation between God and man, passion and virtue, following a geometrical method, as a form of medicina mentis. This method, which investigates human actions and desires as though it was concerned with lines, planes and solids (E 3,

1 This is a modified version of the article, The Melancholy of the Philosopher: Hume and Spinoza on Emotions and Wisdom, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, Vol.3.1, (2005): 4765. I proposed my views on Hume and Spinoza at the Third International Reid Symposium on Scottish Philosophy (University of Aberdeen, July 2004). I wish to thank the respondents of my lecture: Peter Baumann, M. A. Stewart, and other listeners for their generous comments afterwards. I received from Susan James, Jacqueline Taylor, Herman De Dijn, Ortwin de Graef, and an anonymous referee of the JSP invaluable suggestions for improvement of the final version of the article. Of course, I take full responsibility for any remaining flaws in my argument. 2 In the following I avoid any discussion as to whether or not Hume actually read Spinoza. Spinozas philosophy was without doubt en vogue in France when Hume was there to write his Treatise in the period 17341737 (see Wim Klever, More about Humes Debt to Spinoza, Hume Studies 19(1) (1993): 5574). Klever argues that Humes passion theory was directly and fundamentally influenced by reading Spinoza. I am not really convinced by this thesis, though Hume had of course knowledge of Spinozas philosophy through Bayles Dictionnaire. On the affinity between Humes empiricist naturalism and Spinozas rationalist naturalism, see also Annette C. Baier, David Hume, Spinozist, Hume Studies 29(2), (1993): 237252.

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Intro.),3 leads to nothing less than the liberation of man from his enslavement to the emotions. True philosophy forms the way to freedom and virtue or, more precisely, Spinoza sees the unfolding of this (striving for) wisdom as identical with virtue. It may be very hard to achieve this perfection of reason in practice, but, for Spinoza, the intrinsic interwoveness of knowledge and virtue is indisputable.4 Insofar as wisdom merges, in its utter perfection, with the Amor Dei intellectualis, it even transcends human finiteness and becomes a form of salvation (beatitudo). A century after Spinoza, Hume is less optimistic about this idea of philosophy understood as a medicina mentis. In the famous conclusion to Book I of his Treatise, having established the antimetaphysical framework of the science of human nature, he indicates how the desire for knowledge can lead to a deep melancholy and even a nervous breakdown. Here, reason is dethroned in the most radical way imaginable and every hope of deriving salvation from philosophical activity seems to be dissolved. Humes biography testifies that as a youngster he suffered personally from a sort of disease of the learned caused by a too excessive involvement in his new scene of thought.5 Moreover, in his later philosophy, Hume remains
3 For further references to Spinozas works I use the following abbreviations: Ethics (E), Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE). I use the following editions of these works: Baruch de Spinoza, Ethica. Latin text with Dutch translation by Henri Krop (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker/Prometheus, 1677, 2002). Baruch de Spinoza, Ethics. English Translation by G. H. R. Parkinson (Series Oxford Philosophical Texts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Baruch de Spinoza, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, in Herman De Dijn, The Way to Wisdom: Commentaries and introduction to Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. Latin text and English translation by Edwin Curley (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1996). 4 Cf.: Si jam via, quam ad haec ducere ostendi perardua videatur, inveniri tamen potest. Et san arduum debet esse, quod ade rar reperitur (E V, P42, Schol). [If the way that I have shown to lead to this seems to be very arduous, yet it can be discovered. And indeed it must be arduous, since it is found so rarely. (translation by G. H. R. Parkinson, 2000: 316). 5 With a new Scene of Thought Hume refers in the famous Letter to a Physician (probably written March or April 1734) to his science of human nature as worked out in the Treatise. As a result of his philosophical enthusiasm, Hume suffered in the period 172930 from a crisis of emotional and physical distress, which probably lasted until his departure for France in 1734 to write the Treatise. For Humes own testimony of this period in his life see the Letter to a Physician in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), Vol. 1: 1218. Greig identifies Dr. Cheyne as intended recipient of the letter, which Hume probably never sent. Mossner claimed in 1944 that he had overwhelming evidence to conclude that only Dr. Arbuthnot could be the addressee, a thesis recently challenged by John P. Wright (John P. Wright, Dr. George Cheyne, Chevalier Ramsay, and Humes Letter to a Physician, Hume Studies 29 (1) (2003): 125141). On the significance of this letter for understanding Humes early philosophical development, see M.A. Stewart, Humes Intellectual development, Impressions of Hume, ed. Marina Frasca-Spada and Peter Kail (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). For more on the emergence of the new scene of thought cf. Ernest C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954, 1980), Ch. 6 & 7.

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sceptical about the idea that philosophy could straightforwardly turn into a sort of therapy of desire. At first sight at least, the Newtonian science of human nature does not aim at wisdom, but has a strictly theoretical goal: to understand human nature, including the role of the emotions in human life. Recently however, some have claimed that Hume is nonetheless fundamentally in line with a more classical conception of philosophy.6 In the tradition of Socrates, he was convinced that his philosophy, in so far as it leads to a better understanding of human nature, also contributes to the good life, which implies a life in harmony with the findings of the science of human nature (T, 3.3.6; EPM, 9.1415).7 Penelhum qualifies Humes philosophical intentions as follows: I see Hume as a philosopher who is squarely in the Socratic tradition. He is in the Socratic tradition because he sees philosophy a s a source of liberating selfknowledge.8 And, according to Don Garrett, Hume was concerned above all with virtue, with understanding it and cultivating it and of all the virtues, perhaps none concerned him more than the specifically cognitive virtue of wisdom.9 Could one say that this intention forms a major Leitmotiv, not only through his strictly philosophical works, but also his more literary essays? I think so. But if this is the case, it becomes apparent that, for Hume, philosophical activity the doing of philosophy should, in one way or another, lead to the moderation and taming of the emotions, in line with a classical conception of philosophy as the search for wisdom.

6 See Annette C. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments. Reflections on Humes Treatise (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1991); Donald, Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Humes Pathology of Philosophy, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Terence Penelhum, Themes in Hume: the Self, the Will, Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). From Penelhum I derive the characterization of Hume as a Socratic thinker. For some critical notices on Penelhums thesis, cf. Donald Ainslie, Hume, a Scottish Socrates? Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (1) (2003): 133154. 7 I refer further in the text to the following editions of Humes works with abbreviations: A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. David F. Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) [T]; An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford/New York: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 2000) [EHU]; An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford/ New York: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1998) [EPM]; Essays, Moral, Political, Literary, ed. By Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985) [EMPL]; Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Stanley Tweyman (London/New York: Routledge, 1991) [DNR]; Of the Passions, in Four Dissertations, introduction by John Immerwahr, reprint of the 1757 edition (Bristol: Thoemess Press, 1995) [OP]. 8 Penelhum, 2000: vii. 9 Don Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Humes Treatise (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1997): 6.

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One can hardly ignore the fact that Hume, in various places in his philosophical and essayistic works, propagates philosophy as a very special activity which yields a refined sort of happiness (a delicate pleasure) that blesses the soul of the philosopher (T, 1.4.7.12). However, Hume considers such a salvationthrough-philosophy to be a much more ambiguous good than Spinoza does. Only under proper conditions does philosophical activity yield a specific contemplative attitude and calm, which could be identified as a Humean form of wisdom. In what follows, I point out what should be understood by this wisdom and how it differs from Spinozas view on philosophical wisdom. At the same time, I try to uncover the common ground in the views of both of these major modern philosophers, on the relation between philosophy and the moderation of the passions in their search for wisdom.

I. Spinoza and the Search for Wisdom

The idea that the new philosophy should be identified with a deliberate search for wisdom had been at the center of Spinozas thinking from an early stage. In the opening of the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, he speaks in the voice of an imaginary philosophical everyman:
After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as [my] mind was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself, and which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected whether there was something which, once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy, to eternity (TIE, 1).10

Spinoza further specifies the gloomy mood of the would-be philosopher. Ordinary life is empty and futile, because it is determined by external goods which disturb the mind and awaken the emotions. These goods are: sensual pleasure, wealth and honor. In striving for them, the vanity of the human condition finds its origin of sensual appetite, the desire for wealth and a too self-conscious searching for recognition which blind the mind and render it incapable of

10 References are based on the Curley translation, who takes over the older reference system of paragraphs numbered in brackets. I use the Curley translation as it is integrated in De Dijn, 1996.

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thinking of any further good (TIE, 3).11 This blindness makes the self a slave to its emotions, particularly in its deep love of those things that can perish (TIE, 9). The striving for recognition (or honor) is particulary likely to yield sorrow, for here man makes himself the prey not only of his own emotions, but of the emotions of the other as well (TIE, 5). Is there no other good that touches the soul and makes it possible for man to transcend this condition of blindness? In the Tractatus, Spinoza enigmatically identifies the highest good man can attain as the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of nature (TIE, 13). Spinozas philosophy can now be understood as the elucidation of the way in which this good (this union) can be achieved, and the exposure of philosophys role in this process. Philosophical activity, as Spinoza points out in the Tractatus, is itself the true good which leads (as the way or method) to the highest good, which is a goal in itself, and should be considered as the attainment of wisdom. The striving to attain the highest good infuses the mind gradually with a love toward the eternal and infinite and feeds the mind with a joy entirely exempt from sadness (TIE, 10). The achievement of wisdom, together with other individuals if possible, thus consists of a union with the infinite in and through the experience of a specific joy and love. It is striking how Spinoza, already in his Tractatus, defines the state of blessedness in terms of a theory of the emotions (or affects), which will later be elaborated in the Ethics. There, joy exempt from sadness is identified as an elation of the mind interwoven with the knowledge of God as infinite substance. This knowledge is in turn the achievement of a long process of transformation of the passionate self. The everyman in each mortal human being becomes a truly rational self, i.e., a self that has gained adequate knowledge of its own nature and its relation as a finite mode of the infinite substance. In this process, as Spinoza points out in Parts 3 and 4 of the Ethics, the affects (emblematic of the immersion of human existence in its bodily and temporal condition) are transformed from passive and troublesome conceptions of the imagination into active emotions or appraisals of the thinking activity of the self. How should this process be understood? And why does it lead to such a sustained joy and love, which can only be compared with a state of blessedness?

11 Cf.: Nam affects, quibus quotidue conlactamur, referentur plerumque ad aliquam Corporis partem, quae prae reliquis afficitur, ac proinde affects ut plurimum excessum habent, et Mentem in sol unius objecti contemplatione it detinent, ut de aliis cogiatre nequeat... (E 4, P44, Schol). [For the emotions by which we are harassed every day are for the most part related to some part of the body which is affected more than the rest of its parts. Accordingly, the emotions are for the most part excessive and detain the mind in the sole contemplation of one object in such a way that it cannot think of other things (translation by G. H. R. Parkinson, 2000: 259)].

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II. Conatus, Emotions, Reason

It is impossible to reconstruct Spinozas complex conception of the emotions and his therapy of desire modern style in a few paragraphs. But a rough sketch brings out the following picture.12 For Spinoza, man is a thinking, embodied being who strives to persevere in its existence, just like any natural being. As small particles in the great chain of being, humans are immersed in the causal order of Nature, which infinitely transcends the power and scope of their finite mode. In what sounds like a naturalised version of mans Fall, he seems to say that human beings are moreover condemned to persevere in existence in a conscious, self-reflexive way. Man is able, in short, to see his own fragility and the struggle to consciously overcome it becomes part of his conditon. Spinoza discerns as the principle of this simultaneously corporeal and conscious striving the conatus (E3, P9). In fact, conatus, at the level of the mind, is nothing but the consciousness of the striving of the body.13 As far as it is conscious, Spinoza points out, the conatus is experienced as desire (cupiditas). To maintain the existence of the self as finite mode (or concrete existence) is now the underlying principle of the conatus, but as far as it is conscious striving, this desire yields a very specific relation of humans to the world. At this point, the importance of the emotions (or affects) for Spinozistic anthropology becomes apparent. In a modern idiom, one could say that Spinoza defends a cognitive view of the emotions. Emotions (affects) are conceived in the Ethics as judgements, which express an evaluation of the specific relation of an external object (a thing, another being, a happening) to the self.14 The mind judges through the emotions, by a conception of the imagination, whether the body is affected in its existence, in a positive or negative manner, by all sorts of changes and fluctuations in the surrounding world (E3, Def. 3, post. 1). Mans emotional life is thus fundamentally structured around the basic emotions of joy (laetitia) and sadness (tristitia), from which all other emotions are derived. Joy, as far as it signals an increase of power, is experienced as a change towards greater activity and self-reliance of the self (a state of greater perfection, says Spinoza), whereby the self gains a certain mastery over the world and itself. Sadness, on the other hand, as a change towards greater passivity, implies a sort of consciousness of the immersion of the

12 For an illuminating exposition of Spinozas theory of the emotions, see Susan James, Passion and Action: the Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 13 For Spinoza the union of body and soul is intrinsic for the concrete existence of the self. This self is not conceivable as a mode who longs to transcend its low bodily state, so as to realise a more real high spiritual nature. High and low, perfect and imperfect are categories which have no meaning anymore in the new, mechanistic philosophy (E IV, Praefatio). 14 Nico H. Frijda, Spinoza and Current Theory of Emotion, in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Litlle Room Press, 1999).

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self in the causal nexus of Nature (a lesser perfection) (E3, P11, Sch.). When overwhelmed by sadness, its loss of power strikes the mind as painful. The status of the emotions appears now, in the Spinozistic universe, as fundamentally ambiguous. On the one hand, emotions yield a specific knowledge of the world and turn out to have positive effects: they help to maintain the self in its existence, by increasing its active power (e.g., through joy and love) or indicating possible threats to it (e.g., through fear or hate). Spinoza at this point indicates that emotions always imply a certain active conception on the part of the self: they are not merely blind reactions, but cognitively mediated apperceptions of the surrounding world.15 The knowledge vouchsafed by the emotions is, however, always imperfect or inadequate it is, in terms of the Ethics, knowledge of the first kind, which manifests itself as experience based on ideas of the imagination. Through the imagination, the mind forms the inadequate ideas which are the evaluative correlates of the bodily reactions of the self towards an external object or cause. Moreover, due to the particular stance of the self as a desiring mode (with its own temperament, character and life-history) the cognitive information of the emotions derived from this causal relation is always more or less distorted and biased (e.g., in the case of passionate love or jealousy). Spinoza thus stresses that emotions are in a fundamental sense a sign, so to speak, of mans immersion in nature. In their natural statica and dynamica, they appear as a source of instability and inconstancy in human life (E4, P118). As the Tractatus has already shown, when they remain unchecked, emotions condemn humans to a state of sickness unto death.16 In a comment on the observation that the dynamics of the primary emotions of joy and sadness make the mind vacillate, Spinoza says in the Ethics: It is evident from what I have said, that we are in many ways driven about by external causes, and that like waves of the sea driven by contrary winds we toss to and fro unwitting of the issue and of our fate (E3, P59, Sch.). The whole of Ethics, Part 3 thus reads as an exposition of the mechanisms and principles which cause this stormy turbulence in mans passionate life. Spinoza especially draws attention to what one could call the infectious nature of the emotions. When in the grip of passionate love, the mind turns easily to jealousy etc., and this infection in turn has deep intersubjective roots. Spinoza also indicates at this point the often disastrous consequences of mans imitative nature and the mimetic desires caused thereby (cf. E4, App. 13): envy, disparagement, undue pride, self-abasement, and emulation exemplify the wretched condition caused by this mimetic principle (E3, P59, Sch.). Contrary to Descartes and the Stoics, Spinoza thought man would never be able to gain through reason a strict, cognitive mastery of his own nature: Hence

15 James, 1997: 149. 16 For I saw that I was in the greatest danger... like a man suffering from a fatal illness, who, foreseeing certain death unless he employs a remedy, is forced to seek it, however uncertain, with all his strength (TIE, 7).

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it follows, that man is necessarily always a prey to his emotions, that he follows and obeys the general order of nature, and that he accommodates himself thereto, as much as the nature of things demands (E4, P4, Corr.). On the other hand, insofar as the self consciously recognises its nature as a striving being, it is in principle able to transcend the bondage of its own nature, to a certain degree. Radical detachment from our emotions may not be achievable, but it should be possible at least to counter their destructive tendencies in a specific way. Here Spinozas rationalistic preoccupations become apparent and the Stoic undertone of the Spinozistic therapy of desire in part 4 and 5 of the Ethics is readily apparent. It is through reason, or more specifically, through the careful following of the way of the philosopher that man can reach a state of freedom and sustained detachment of his or her immersion in his or her own passionate nature. One should notice here the specific impact of Spinozas a-teleological and mechanistic view on nature, especially human nature. Though he denies the intelligibility of an Aristotelian entelecheia, Spinoza still defends the idea that human beings live more according to their own nature when they follow reason. But what can it mean to live according to human nature within the Spinozistic universe? One discerns at this level a certain tension in Spinozas metaphysics, which encompasses the whole of his Ethics. On the one hand, Spinoza defines human beings as individuated modi which, by their specific conatus or particular passionate make-up, have desires, make life-plans, develop an identity and possess other typically human concerns. Through the grip of the affections and imagination, the mind unavoidably forms an anthropomorphic conception of mans existential condition. On the other hand, from the philosophical point of view, human beings are as finite modes manifestations of Nature at large, or the Substance, which has no teleological structure. Nature qua substance is, in part 1 of the Ethics, identified as causa sui or God and is, as such, devoid of all antropomorphic qualities and qualifications. The core of Spinozas way to wisdom consists in the idea that true freedom for man implies reaching a point of view where the anthropomorphic Sitz-im-Leben is substituted by a rational (i.e., adequate) understanding of oneself as part of the Divine Substance. Moreover, this very shift of the mind leads, according to Spinoza, to true happiness and eternal joy however difficult it may be to attain it (and throughout life, this shift is never totally realised). Nevertheless, it is this trust in the liberating capacities of reason which makes Spinoza a particular sort of Stoic. Hume, as will become clear, will take a position which is much more ambiguous about the force of reason and the place it can attain in human nature. The rationalism of Spinoza his trust in reason and in philosophy as the way to wisdom remains, however, a peculiar one, compared with that of Descartes or Leibniz. The scientific understanding of human nature is, within the Spinozistic approach, not the end-point of the way to wisdom, but only the necessary bridge towards the scientia intuitiva, in which true philosophy culminates. As is well known, in the Ethics, Spinoza distinguishes this scientia intuitiva from mere reason: he calls the former the third kind and the latter the second kind of 188

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knowledge. The exploration of the way through which the finite mode man transforms himself from a merely affectionate and anxiety-ridden animal, into a free and thinking part of the divine susbtance is the purpose of the Spinozistic medicina mentis. How should we conceive of this process? Why has philosophy such a privileged role to play in it? For Spinoza, thinking is activity. The conscious deployment of the conatus as reason (or intellectus) deploys an increasing power of the self, insofar as the mind is able to grasp things in their true causal order and necessity. In fact, reason is the conatus becoming purely conscious and active, for here the mind is its own cause, not hindered or rendered passive by external causes. From this conception, Spinoza derives his view of the way philosophy or the cultivation of reason helps to master, or at least discipline, the emotions. This relative mastery consists in the integration of specific affects in the pure activity of reason, causing especially a joy which is no longer experienced as rendering the self passive. Joy thus becomes an active emotion, the affective expression, so to speak, of the successful activity of reason as such. This fusion of affect and philosophical insight, however, asks for a careful deployment of the thinking capacities of the mind. Spinoza discerns two stages in the unfolding of the sustainable joy of the philosopher and the reaching of the scientia intuitiva which this joy exemplifies.

III. From knowledge to salvation

During the first stage of this process, as part 4 of the Ethics shows, the mind discovers how reason can become a constructive force through which the understanding gains insight into the mechanisms and principles underlying the emotions. This understanding already causes a sort of joy, for it implies a change towards perfection by which the grip of the passions and the imagination on the human mind are disentangled. The perfection of reason thus enables the self to preserve its existence as an active being by turning, so to speak, emotions on emotions (or affections on passions), in a sort of homeopathic healing process. Reason is the instrument that provides the precepts to start this process of self-transformation and modifies it as it goes along: but it is also the mode wherein the conatus reveals itself as conscious power (or desire to know). In other words, the mind (of the philosopher) recognises that through the perfection of reason its conatus perseveres in its existence in a manner which is most adapted to the human condition.17

17 For the particular significance of this transformation of the conatus merely to the conatus intelligendi at E4, P26, see Yirmiyahu Yovel, Transcending Mere Survival: from Conatus to Conatus Intelligendi, in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999).

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One of the things reason reveals to the mind of the philosopher is the way in which we achieve a certain control of our emotions through the development of a prudential ethics. In Part 4 of the Ethics, Spinoza defends the idea that virtue consists in the perfection of the striving for self-preservation by making reason into an instrumental guide. He says: To act absolutely in obedience to virtue is in us the same thing as to act, to live, or to preserve ones being (these three terms are identical in meaning) in accordance with the dictates of reason on the basis of seeking what is useful to ones self (E4, P24). At the same time, this instrumentalisation of reason implies the positive enhancement of the conscious conatus or desire (cupiditas), whereby the mind increases its power and self-reliance. The deployment of an enlightened self-interest generates a significant shift in the self-understanding of human beings, which goes beyond the instrumental control of the emotions.18 For as far as it gains an increasingly adequate knowledge of the emotions and their workings, the mind distances itself necessarily from the sound and fury caused by the external intrusions of the world. The mind thus reaches already a certain state of inner satisfaction and constancy, overcoming its passivity. Seeing the causes of its previous, deplorable condition, the philosopher becomes himself or herself an active factor in the steering of his or her desires and in the transformation of his or her passions. In Ethics, part 4, Spinoza points to several aspects of this perfection of reason which is, after all, nothing but the cultivation of virtue or the knowledge of good and evil. He shows, for example, how the mind can learn to calculate its long-term interest, and thus counterbalance strong but irrational emotions with more moderate and finely-tuned ones; how the mind is able to grasp specific rational precepts (dictamina rationes), which offer an insight in the nature and structuring principles of the emotions (E4, P1937); and, finally, how true adequate knowledge of mans nature intrinsically depends on the knowledge of God or nature as substance. This last aspect brings us to the heart of Spinozas conception of philosophy as a search for wisdom, or the attainment of the scientia intuitiva. It appears that the conscious adaptation of the ethics of self-preservation, and the cultivation of adequate knowledge about the emotions and mans nature through reason, form a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to actually reach the state of wisdom or blessedness at which the true philosopher aims. Why, one could ask, should the ethics of selfpreservation and cognitive self-mastery (developed as far as possible) be integrated in an intuitive science of the ultimate things God, nature, the absolute?19 Why

18 See De Dijn, 1996: 247252. 19 The answer to these questions is still an object of considerable contention among specialists. I follow here in general the interpretation by De Dijn, 1996 and Theo Zweerman, Lintroduction la philosophie selon Spinoza: une analyse structurelle de lintroduction du trait de la rforme de lentendement, suivie dun commentaire de ce texte (Leuven: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1993).

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can true wisdom or blessedness, according to Spinoza, only be achieved through a leap from merely adequate knowledge to real intuitive insight? Spinoza is firm about this, but the exact status and meaning of intuitive knowledge for his conception of wisdom remains an object of considerable contention.20 To elucidate this complicated matter at least a bit, one could start with Spinozas own remark that the increased insight into human nature through abstract reasoning may foster the conditions for virtue and freedom, but that this empowering of reason also awakens all sorts of disturbances and new emotions in the mind of the philosopher. The satisfaction gained by the development of scientific knowledge is, in short, in a fundamental sense, unstable, and the alleged mastery of mans nature through reason at this stage clearly unreliable. The joy of the philosopher who stays at the level of mere abstract, scientific knowledge remains ambiguous after all. With an allusion to Ecclesiastes, Spinoza says in part 4 of the Ethics: he who increases knowledge increases sorrow (E4, P17, sch.).21 In other words, the mind may gain strength, at least for a little while, through the cultivation of reason and can thereby experience a specific joy. However, this activity of reason may rapidly turn into sadness, when the self recognises that it remains, as before, a still all-too-human part of nature. There remains, so to speak, a gap between the insight of reason the relative control this knowledge of the second kind yields and the concrete experience of the philosophical mind, searching for salvation as a particular thinking mind. In Ethics, Part 5, Spinoza shows how the mind can reach an ultimate state of blessedness by transcending a merely abstract, general knowledge of human nature, and the place of the emotions in human existence. This ascension to a higher state of knowledge requires the activation of an idea that every human being naturally possesses, but which remains hidden to most men because of their passionate and unstable Sitz-im-Leben. Already in Part 2 of the Ethics, it was shown how man naturally has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God (E3, P47). It is from the idea of the necessity and unity of the one substance that the mind derives its adequate knowledge of the whole of Nature and of the relation between Nature and its myriad modifications, among which are the concrete finite modi of human beings. More specifically, the thinking mind reveals to itself, in the perfection of its own conatus as conatus intelligendi, how it is itself a small, fragile particle of this one substance. As a concrete, embodied being, the self contemplates itself, its emotions and its knowledge of itself in the light of the infinite knowledge and power which is God.

20 De Dijn 1996: 253261; Aaron V. Garret, Meaning in Spinozas Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 181223. Cf. also: Herman De Dijn, Theory and practice and the practice of theory, in Ethik, Recht und Politik bei Spinoza, ed. Marcel Senn and Manfred Walther (Zurich: Schulthess, 2001). 21 Cf. Eccles.: 1:18.

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Ethics, Part 5, reveals how this contemplative exercise can be integrated into and become part of concrete strategies which aim at a transformation of the emotions from mere passive happenings to active states of mind. Knowledge of ones own particularity merges with knowledge of the absolute and yields a love and joy that overcomes the sickness unto death. In reaching a simultaneously active and concrete state of sustained wisdom, the mind sees the profound unity between its nature, virtue and God. Or, so says Spinoza, in this pure thinking activity, the mind sees itself accompanied by the idea of God as cause (E5, P36, Dem.). This intuitive apprehension forms such an empowering of the conatus, that the self sees itself sub specie aeternitatis, i.e., as emanation of the formidable power and extension of God (or Nature). It is this capacity to see the infinite in the finite modus of a concrete thinking being that yields the specific wisdom of the scientia intuitiva. This apprehension is the highest wisdom human beings can reach and should strive for.22 The unfolding of this intuitive science illuminates, in other words, the particular mind of the philosopher in search of wisdom: it is a process which is at the same time cognitive and affective.23 It is cognitive because this intuitive science forms the culmination of reason by yielding adequate knowledge of human nature. It is affective because through the unpacking of adequate knowledge, the thinking mind experiences its own conatus as sheer self-fortifying activity: an experience, which from the very structure of human nature, triggers certain affective states. However, in contrast to the haphazard fluctuations and tossing of the emotions in common life, the thinking activity finds a sustainable expression of the conatus in such active and stable emotions as intellectual love and joy.24 How should this interwoveness of love and joy be understood? Because of its active, self-fortifying character, the activity of (adequate) thinking causes joy, a joy that even transcends, in a way, the finiteness of the self. In bringing the activity of thinking to perfection (through the scientia intuitiva), the mind of the philosopher participates in the infinite attribute of the thinking of God or the Substance, which is nothing but a formidable way of empowering of the conatus. This joy thus automatically fuses with the contemplation of the cause which yields this joy: God. And in participating in the Divine thinking, the mind is totally active, which makes the Amor Dei intellectualis into an active emotion or state of mind (E5, P32). Indeed, the overcoming of finitude by humans has a paradoxical nature and is never wholly realised. It implies a transcendence of human existence as finite mode from the point of view of the absolute (the substance or God as causa sui). However, infinity is here a modality of experience si-

22 Spinoza was influenced on this point by Maimonides in Stephen Nadler, Spinoza. A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 23 Cf. for this: Herman De Dijn, Modernit et Tradition: Essais sur lentre-deux (Leuven: Peeters/Vrin, 2004): 35 e.v. 24 See also: A. Garrett, 2003: 192.

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tuated within the finite life of the self, not a leap to another order of existence. But as far as it yields a pure joy, this ultimate state of wisdom means a true liberation from the bondage of the emotions and a transformation of the melancholy from which the philosopher longs to be released.

IV. Hume on reason and the medecine of the mind

The idea that the practice of philosophy could yield a salvation (beatitudo) which transcends human finitude sounds implausible and even absurd to a Humean philosopher. Even the more humble view that one could be cured from melancholy through the search for wisdom and in so doing attain virtue, remains questionable from the perspective of Humes philosophy. The key for a better understanding of the difference between Hume and Spinoza on this point is found in their divergent views on the place of reason in human nature. Where, as we have seen, Spinoza in a certain sense sticks to the Stoic-like ideal of the life of reason as being that which is most in accordance with human nature, for Hume this ideal means ultimately that one chooses a way which is unnatural for man. This sceptical appreciation of reason is fundamental to Hume, from his very first steps as a philosopher, as A Treatise of Human Nature testifies. To be sure, in the course of his youthful masterwork this scepticism becomes more moderate, or less pyrrhonic, as Humes philosophical system progresses.25 And it is this moderate or academic scepticism that obtains pride of place in Humes later philosophy. As becomes apparent in both the Enquiries and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Hume believes that the steady cultivation of philosophy should remain in balance with common life. If philosophy becomes too detached, it will cause, rather than dissolve, melancholy and despair (D: 183185). If salvation from melancholy by the philosophical act can reasonably be expected, the philosopher will therefore have to develop a certain diffidence towards his own search for wisdom.26 Compared to Spinozas rationalistic naturalism, Humes empiricist and antimetaphysical naturalism reveals a quite divergent conception of philosophy as a therapy of desire. In the well-known essay The Sceptic, published a year after the Treatise, Hume significantly remarks that the medecine of the mind, so much boasted remains an ambiguous issue, certainly for the bulk of mankind, but even for the philosophically minded lite.27 The literary rhetoric and context of this essay

25 Baier, 1991. 26 Humes conception of doing of philosophy is characterised by Livingston as the philosophical act (Livingston, 1998). 27 It is possible that Hume had Spinoza in mind when referring to the medicine of the mind. In his Medicina mentis Tschirnhaus was obviously influenced by Spinoza, who uses himself the medicinal metaphor for philosophy in his Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. See also De Dijn, 1996: 13.

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published together with 3 others, entitled respectively, The Epicurean, The Stoic and the Platonist makes it somewhat unclear what Humes own views on the role of philosophy in moderating the passions exactly are, in either in The Sceptic or the other essays. Obviously, however, in The Sceptic Hume gives voice to a certain diffidence towards the ideal of the classical philosophical sage, which is in line with the Treatise. Here, as in later works, he holds firm to his scepsis towards philosophy as a sure guide to wisdom and the liberation of the vicissitudes of common life. Most people, Hume argues in The Sceptic, are excluded from all pretensions to philosophy and are unable even to wish to alter their passionate nature through the cultivation of reason (EMPL: 168169). The emotions may be a source of suffering, but at the same time they are the flesh and bone out of which each persons particular character is made. Therefore, any [r]easonings concerning human life and the methods of attaining happiness are radically constrained by human nature itself, for [a]lmost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though, perhaps, with some intervals, through the whole course of his life (EMPL: 160). Only in vain could one think that philosophy could change substantially this inclination of the self. Therefore, one shouldnt place overly high expectations in it as a medicina mentis. Hume thus takes a quite divergent stance towards the sickness of the mind, which is, according to Spinoza in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, an all too obvious consequence of the grip of the passions on human life. However, Hume admits, in line with Spinoza, that some rare minds have an inclination to philosophy. For them, the cultivation of reason seems an appropriate means to transcend their passionate nature. But even with regard to these too, Hume adds, the authority [of philosophy] is very weak and limited (EMPL: 161). Even when cultivated with the utmost art and industry, Hume contends, the search for wisdom can fall short of its ultimate goal. To be receptive to virtue, and to desire to obtain it through the cultivation of reason, is a valuable thing (EMPL: 169). But a too obsessive devotion to study and contemplation may sour the temper and yield contrary effects. This last fact Hume had already learned as a young man from personal experience, as I mentioned already.28 Hume discerns a paradox here. On the one hand, the reflections of philosophy are usually too subtile and distant to take place in common life, or eradicate any affection. On the other hand, when succesful, these reflections may yield an unhealthy apatheia. Incessant study and meditation often spreads an universal insensibility over the mind and plunges the self into a state of mild schizophrenia: the thinking self becomes estranged from its bodily endowment and everyday affective life (EMPL: 1723). Remarkably, Hume, already in the essay The Stoic, defends the idea, given voice by an imaginary Stoic sage, that in this sullen Apathy, neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found (EMPL: 151).

28 See supra, note 5.

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Nowhere did Hume point out the fatal consequences of an overly enthusiastic application of the mind to thinking with more bravura than in the closing section of the Treatise, Book 1. In sharp contrast with Spinoza and seventeenth century rationalism in general, Hume here shows himself to be sceptical about reason, and thus about philosophy as an autonomous, self-fortifying activity.29 After having revealed that our most fundamental beliefs about causality, world and self are unwarranted, Hume concludes without reservation that reason is unreliable: [T]he understanding, when it acts alone, and according to its most general principles, entirely subverts itself, and leaves not the lowest degree of evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy or in common life (T, 1.4.7.7). The nexus of beliefs on which human understanding is built appears to be ill-structured and even contradictory in its very nature. The subversive consequences of Humes anti-metaphysical epistemology are clear. Any reliance on a fixed, absolute point of view (a view from nowhere) as the ground of science (Descartes cogito, Spinozas Deus sive substantia) is dismissed as illusory.30 Hume explains his doubt about the philosophical enterprise conceived along these foundationalist lines in a sharp tone:
For with what confidence can I venture upon such bold enterprizes, when beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature? Can I be sure, that in leaving all establishd opinions I am following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune shoud at last guide me on her foot-steps? After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can give no reason why I shoud assent to it... (T, 1.4.7.3).

The confidence of Spinozas everyman is here turned upside-down. The empire of philosophy becomes, at this stage of Humean scepticism, an extremely inhospitable place. In what sounds like an inversion of Spinozas image of man tossed back and forth on the sea of passions, Hume pities himself for having followed reason too enthusiastically: Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escapd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-

29 According to Donald Livingston, this conception of philosophy as an autonomous activity is for Hume a characteristic of false philosophy. See Livingston, 1998, Ch. 6. 30 According to De Dijn, the dismissal of the idea of a Cartesian scientia forms for Hume the background for his antifoundational and nonreductionistic philosophical anthropology (Herman De Dijn, Humes nonreductionist Philosophical Anthropology, The Review of Metaphysics 56 (2003): 587603). Also, in the interpretation by Annette Baier, Humes broad conception of philosophy is presented as anti-foundationalist in character. However, Baier sees in Humes science of human nature (as given shape in the Treatise) more an anticipation of Marx, Darwin, Freud and Foucault (Baier 1991: 25).

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beaten vessel (T, 1.4.7.1). Further on, the collapse of reason is openly identified as the cause of a sort of emotional breakdown:
The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? What beings surround me? ...I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, invirond with the deepest darkness (T, 1.4.7.8).

Even by his friends, the philosopher is considered a strange monster, cut of from all normal human interaction. However, as is well known, Hume never gives a sustained scepticism the last word. At the moment of the deepest vertigo, a remarkable shift of mind cures it of this philosophical melancholy and delirium (T, 1.4.7.9). Through a sort of over-saturation, the obsessive desire for intellectual certainty is suddenly silenced, and the philosopher is chased from his closet and forced to return to the world. The catharsis sketched in the closing section of the Treatise, Book 1, is remarkable. The philosopher leaves his room, he dines, he plays back-gammon with his friends and will only return to his study when he finds himself in a more detached and relaxed mood. In the shift from Book 1 to Book 2 and 3 of the Treatise, the reader sees Hume not so much abandon the practice of philosophy, as modify the expectations one can reasonably gain from the satisfaction of ones philosophical curiosity. When one accepts the limits of human understanding and the lack of foundations for reason as such, radical scepticism is freed from its fatal character and appears even futile.31 The philosophical mind finds a renewed energy to apply itself to the study of the very sphere which saves human beings from a radical scepticism: common life itself.32 Hume turns to the study of this common life in the rest of his Treatise, and in all of his later works. The skillful exploration of human nature, as it emerges in mens behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures becomes now his chief object of study (T, Intro, 10). And when the philoso-

31 For this characterization of Humes scepticism as futile, see Patricia De Martelaere, Hume over kennis: van scepticisme tot naturalisme, in David Hume. Filosoof van de menselijke natuur, ed. P. De Martelaere and W. Lemmens (Kapellen/Kampen: Pelckmans/Agora, 2001). 32 The return to a sensus communis as emblematic of Humes philosophy of common life is analysed in an original manner by Donald Livingston (see: Livingston, 1998: 383407).

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pher returns to the investigation of the understanding as such, as happens in the first sections of the first Enquiry, it will be in a more relaxed state of mind. From this perspective, it also becomes apparent that the inclination to philosophy that we find in some rare minds has its merits. More specifically, in line with the classical view and with Spinozas contention, Hume admits that the search for philosophical wisdom fosters virtue and moulds the emotions. This is how it sounds in The Sceptic: [A] serious attention to the sciences and liberal arts softens and humanizes the temper, and cherishes those fine emotions, in which true virtue and honour consists (EMPL: 170). Hume seems here to approach, to a certain degree, the ideal of the stoic sage, who manifests in the eponymous essay a more classical conception of wisdom: the true philosopher is called here the man of virtue who governs his appetites, subdues his passions, and has learned, from reason, to set a just value on every pursuit and enjoyment (EMPL: 148). How exactly to understand this merging of scepticism and stoicism is a problem all its own. However, if we take it as a sign of Humes admission that the doing of philosophy can have, under the proper conditions, a healing and liberating capacity, it is equally clear that in what the true philosophy reveals about human nature (and in particular about the emotions), as in what sort of wisdom it helps to establish, Humean wisdom diverges substantially from that of Spinozas sage.

V. From Passions to Reason

The return to common life as the proper object of study for the new science of man reveals Humes intellectual and philosophical commitment. This decision implies the acknowledgment by the philosopher of his own bent of mind as a special source of pleasure and thus worth pursuing. Here also, as with Spinoza, we see a sort of homeopathic principle at work. In other words, the philosophical attitude, which was in its initial enthusiastic outburst a cause of melancholy, transforms itself into a medium of healing, into a medicine of the mind. Part of this process of self-transformation relies precisely on the acceptance of a dimension in human nature which reason cannot wholly control, but which is, at the same time, constitutive of human nature as such: the passions or emotions. But what does this acceptance imply exactly? Does its significance lie in the fortification of adequate knowledge of human nature, which necessarily yields the transformation of the passions into affections (or active forces of joy and love)? Or does Hume have another conception of the sort of wisdom philosophy should and could aim for, given his particular outlook of human nature? Let me first give a brief overview of the positive findings of Humes anatomy of the passions. I will then take a closer look at the Humean conception of wisdom and how it is related to his way of doing philosophy. 197

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Hume delivers, in line with forerunners such as Hobbes and Spinoza, an account of the passions and affections that corroborates the new deterministicmechanistic world view.33 He identifies passions as reflective impressions, which should be distinguished from thoughts (beliefs) and purely bodily movements and thus have, as perceptions of the mind, a sui generis status. He also discerns a homeostatic principle at work in the affective realm of the human mind: the avoidance of pain and the continuation of pleasure, without which we would be incapable of passion or action, of desire or volition (T, 3.3.1.2). Hume offers no direct equivalent of Spinozas conatus or Hobbess endeavour for self-preservation as an all-encompassing basic principle of the passionate life. Rather, he distinguishes more primitive passions and drives, which are innate and almost instinctive, from more complex passions or affections, which depend on previous experiences of pain and pleasure (T, 2.1.1 & 2).34 Generally speaking, what Hume calls passions, would nowadays be called emotions although he uses this latter term as well, without distinguishing the two terms in a very consistent way. Exemplary of the first sort of passions or drives are, according to Hume, bodily appetites as well as passions such as benevolence and the love of children. Among these primary passions, Hume reckons some additional ones with a specific phenomenological colour: the desire that enemies should be punished and friends should be happy, next to the love of life. The second sort of passions are instinctive only in a very general sense: they all derive from the principle of pain and pleasure. For their concrete manifestation, however, these passions depend on the affective and volitional structure of the self and on the way this self is situated in a world of natural, social and existential relations.35 Within this last class of passions, Hume distinguishes the direct passions such as grief and joy, fear and hope, from what he calls the indirect passions of pride and humility, love and hate. Each of these passions forms a reflective evaluation of information yielded by the senses and the imagination. This reflective perception can rise up directly, as when a fearful object is felt to be

33 Whether Hume is defending a purely mechanistic view on the passions, or a more proto-Darwinian account, is still an object of contention. For a nuanced view on Humes alleged Newtonianism cf: Jane McIntyre, Hume: Second Newton of the Moral Sciences, Hume Studies 20(2)(1994): 318 and John P. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983). 34 For an interesting account of the moral significance of this distinction between more instinctive and other passions in the Treatise cf. Jacqueline Taylor, Justice and the Foundations of Social Morality in Humes Treatise, Hume Studies 24 (1) (1998): 530 (esp. sections II & III). 35 For the importance of existential relations in Humes passion theory cf. Donald Ainslie, Scepticism about Persons in Book II of Humes Treatise, Journal of the History of Philosophy 37(3), (1999): 69492.

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threatening and the mind forms an idea of it, or more indirectly, as when a beautiful object (say a house) is seen as mine: then the passion of pride rises up as a complex association of ideas (of house and self) and impressions (of pleasure because of the beauty of the house and pride properly speaking). According to Hume, closely related to these latter passions are the moral sentiments, which also have a specific phenomenology, but cannot be conceived of as arising independently of pride and humility, love and hate. In general, Hume introduces some observations in his passion theory which sound familiar to contemporary scholars of emotion theory, but also reveal some specific interpretative difficulties. Passions, understood as reflective perceptions of the mind, form an evaluative reaction to changes in body and mind, caused by some external cause (object, happening, another human being), which is experienced as painful or pleasurable (OP: 121). Mental occurences like grief or joy, fear or hope, for example, reflect information about the outer world yielded by the senses and by (ideas of) the imagination or understanding (T, 2.3.9). In collaboration with the more direct drives and desires, these passions thus structure the interaction of a bodily incarnated and conscious self within the world. Hume has largely been interpreted as the defender of a feeling-theory of passions (or emotions). In the Treatise, Book 2, he stresses the primitive character of the passions as reflective impressions and declares that they reveal their phenomenological colour by direct introspection. Pride, for example, is initially characterised as a simple and uniform impression of which it is impossible to give a definition by a multitude of words. However, Hume admits, that to have a proper insight in this emotion, among others, it is necessary to reconstruct the circumstances which attend it (T, 2.1.2.1). A careful reading of his theory of the passions (as developed in the Treatise and later in the dissertation Of the Passions), reveals how Hume can be interpreted as defending a view of the passions as complex and dynamic realities, which need to be understood from a functional perspective. Rather than blind mental occurences or self-contained feelings, the passions appear (in this charitable reconstruction of Humes Treatise, Book 2) as evaluative attitudes, which structure the relation of the self to the world in a unifying manner. Is Hume here in line with contemporary cognitivism in emotion theory, as defended by Robert Solomon, Robert de Sousa, and Martha Nussbaum, among others?36 Many Hume scholars are perhaps unconvinced by this interpretation, but there are exceptions. Sympathising with the minority, I would say that Hume exemplifies the idea that emotions have a more or less appro-

36 Cf. Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Ronald De Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).

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priate judgemental content and intentionality, which can be more or less reasonable or appropriate to the circumstances.37 Humes view of the role of the passions and emotions in human life is at first sight not at all tragic and pessimistic. Especially in the Treatise and The Sceptic he seems eager to point out how the self relies on the passions as constructive and necessary realities to empower its struggle to sustain its existence. Without the impulses of pride and love, for example, the self would not identify with things, meanings and persons it considers valuable, and would therefore not be driven by the propense and averse motions of the mind, which derive from this evaluative involvement in the world (T, 2.2.4.4; 3.3.1.2). Hume stresses the contagious character of the emotions and passions, and considers the mechanism of sympathy to be one of the chief regulating principles of human nature. However, where forebears like Hobbes and Spinoza see in this tendency of comparison (or affectuum imitatio, as Spinoza calls it), a sign of the dependence of the self on what it doesnt control, Hume welcomes the fact that minds are like mirrors for each other, sympathetically responding to one anothers emotions.38 Sympathy the spontaneous tendency of the human mind to reflect the passions of others is for Hume directly constitutive for the identity of the self, and the intercourse of sentiments and opinions in common life. However, one should not give a one-sided account of Humes view on mans passionate and social nature. In line with more traditional philosophical conceptions of the passions, Hume is not blind to the destructive forces of selfishness and pride, jealousy and hate, avarice and ambition, fear and uncertainty, which are all, in general, the result of the principle of comparison (as a sort of inversion of sympathy) (T, 2.2.8.720; 3.3.2.5).

37 Baier defends the view that Hume distinguishes between passions as complexes (or attitudes) and mere emotions, which should be identified then as mental occurences with a strongly episodic character (Baier 1991: 160170, 180181). This distinction between attitude and feeling allows for a much richer interpretation of Humes theory of the passions (esp. what I call here the evaluative passions), but I am not so sure whether one can so neatly identify and distinguish concepts like feeling, affection, emotion and passion from each other in Humes account: he uses them all in a not very coherent way. I therefore abstract from Baiers distinction, though I follow in general her mild cognitive view of Humes account of the passions. Baiers view had before been defended by, among others, Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) and Donald Davidson, Humes Cognitive theory of Pride, in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). 38 Cf. Spinoza, Ethica, III, Propositio 27, Scholium. For an example of Hobbess view on the destructive character of comparison in social life, cf. his observations on honour throughout the Leviathan, esp. Part I.

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Hume admits, as becomes apparent throughout the Treatise, that there is a constitutive role of reason in moderating the passions, especially by the establishment of morals and politics. This rehabilitation of reason throughout Humes Treatise is often underestimated in the literature, but can hardly be ignored.39 Of course, reason, this wonderful instinct which makes man an inventive species and remarkably superior to beasts (T, 3.3.4.5), is not the source of an absolutely adequate knowledge that makes us love the Good or God, or helps us to radically transcend our finite nature. Reason, as a naturalised instance of the relation between mind and world, should be considered rather, in Humes empiricism, as a constructive force which has no sovereign authority. At the most basic level, Humean reason is a function of the imagination and the passions, and is in the first instance an instrumental slave which yields information about the world and means-end relations to obtain specific goals and desires (T, 1.4.1.3; 2.3.3.2; 3.1.1). On a more structural level, Hume defends the idea that the moulding of the passions and emotions, through education and custom, creates a stability of character in the self which is generally interpreted in common life as a determination of reason (T, 2.3.3.910). From a philosophical point of view, this general calmness of the passions and emotions cannot be identified as reason in the strict sense of the term. But the observation confirms that, in common life, passions can be more or less integrated into the character of the self, and thus be considered more or less reasonable. In short, the calmness of the passions should be identified as a sign of the reasonableness of the virtuous self. One could also discern a socio-historical dimension of reason in Humes exposition of morals in the Treatise, Book 3. Reason emerges here as a capacity for judgment and contrivance, at work in the general rules and precepts of the conventions through which society is given shape and is sustained.40 Here, Humes account of artificial morality (justice, promises, and government) appears as the background for a more institutional taming and moulding of the passions, which contributes to the flourishing of virtue and happiness. Through civil society, passions and affections are made calm and moderate: the violent passions (such as hate and revenge or jealousy) are, through custom and habit, disciplined and put to a certain degree under the guidance of the moral sentiments. Thanks to the philosopher, this complex process of the moulding of the passions can thus, according to Hume, be understood in its origins and appreciated for its public utility. Also in this sense, philosophy can foster the taste of Humes famous judicious spectator, whose ability to judge properly about vice and virtue, irrespective of his or her particular interests and desires, is identified as a specific form of reasonableness: This language will be easily understood, if we consider what we formerly said concerning that reason, which is able to oppose our passion; and

39 Baier: 1991, Ch. 12. 40 For the social dimension of Humes account of reason and the role of conventions as a type of general rules, cf. Baier 1991, ch. 10-12 and Taylor 1998: 22024.

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which we have found to be nothing but a general calm determination of the passions, founded on some distant view or reflection (T, 3.3.1.18).

VI. Humean Wisdom and Diffidence

But how does this gradual rehabilitation of reason throughout the science of human nature relate to a Humean conception of wisdom? As Hume himself admits, his science of human nature is the work of an anatomist rather than a painter (T, 3.3.6.6). Responding to Hutcheson, who thought the Treatise lacked a certain warmth for the cause of virtue, Hume seems to distance himself from any normative intention or practical perspective in his philosophy. The philosopher aims only to explain in a cold, detached manner. His task is not to depict virtue in lively colours with the purpose of instructing his readers. In this perspective, the skilfull anatomy of the role of the emotions in human life can only indirectly function as a way to wisdom or a therapy of desire. But maybe it is exactly this indirect anatomising attitude which can provide, for those rare minds with an inclination to philosophy, and in the appropriate circumstances, a certain salvation and blessedness Humean style. But how is this salvation reached, according to Hume? In what sense does it make Hume into a philosopher with a coherent and recurrent conception of philosophy as a specific way to wisdom? In addition, how does the medicine of the mind Humean style differ then from the Spinozistic one? At the end of Book 2 of the Treatise, Hume draws attention to a peculiar passion, the love of truth, which lies at the origin of philosophical activity. Hume here admits that this passion has a remarkable, but also somewhat ambiguous outlook (T, 2.3.10.4). First of all, this passion mobilises human reason, but not in the instrumental manner ascribed to it in the previous sections of Book 1 and especially Book 2 of the Treatise. In the famous metaphor of Book 2 of the Treatise (T, 2.3.3), reason is considered the slave of the passions, which detects the means-end relations in function of the satisfaction of all sorts of passions and desires. But now Hume recognises that under proper circumstances the search for truth and knowledge can become, in human life, a goal on its own. Hume does not connect this appreciation of the search for knowledge, as Spinoza does, with a sort of ideal of self-mastery: but he here distances himself in a significant way from his diffidence towards a overly enthusiastic application of oneself to philosophy, as typified in the closing sections of Book I. Not spleen and melancholy, but joy and a delicate pleasure, have become the result of an appropriate commitment to this love of truth. In his typical, mildly ironic style, Hume even compares the delight of doing philosophy with this other most honourable activity of the eighteenth-century gentleman: hunting. Both hunting and philosophy mobilise some specific attitudes and virtues in men (and perhaps also in women? one would like to ask Hume), which makes one more or less successful in these activities. 202

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Philosophy as medicina mentis? Hume and Spinoza on Emotions and Wisdom

For the philosopher, it is clear, Hume asserts, that the very application of the mind to study or the search for truth almost spontaneously awakens specific qualities of the understanding or intellectual virtues. More precisely, the importance of the object of study, the genius and extraordinary capacity with which it is studied, the peculiar pleasure this activity yields, and the successful outcome of the investigation, all cause the mind to apply itself, often with extraordinary energy, to study and contemplation. As a result, the curiosity or love of truth captivates the mind and becomes the source of a specific joy and satisfaction. As Hume admits in the conclusion of the Treatise, Book 1, he would feel himself a loser in the point of pleasure if he did not here follow his inclination. The origin of his philosophy thus lies in the delicate pleasure vouchsafed by following his philosophical curiosity (T, 1.4.7.12). Furthermore, this satisfaction has an enduring character: it not only relaxes the mind of the philosopher, but causes a sort of calm, steady self-acceptance and quietude. Could one say that this inner satisfaction and quietude of the mind, caused by the practice of philosophy, is as important in Hume as joy and blessedness are in Spinoza? Despite Humes lightness of tone, one should not underestimate the positive effects of the application of the mind to philosophy in this careless manner (T, 1.4.7.14). The successful philosopher will experience a significant change in his temperament and affections when he devotes his mind to study and science in the right manner. As Hume remarks in The Sceptic:
It rarely, very rarely happens, that a man of taste and learning is not, at least, an honest man, whatever frailties may attend him. The bent of his mind to speculative studies must mortify in him the passions of interest and ambition, and must, at the same time, give him a greater sensibility of all the decencies and duties of life. He feels more fully a moral distinction in characters and manners; nor is his sense of this kind diminished, but, on the contrary, it is much encreased by speculation (EMPL: 170).41

Moreover, the cultivation of what Hume calls at the beginning of the first Enquiry his true metaphysics, offers not only a harmless pleasure to the mere philosopher, but will also change morals and manners.42 The genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, so he specifies, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling (EHU, 1.9). For the cultivation of true metaphysics implies the gra-

41 The idea that through philosophy the mind can become more calm and discerning, thus cultivating a taste for wise judgment which goes beyond the aesthetic sphere, cf. also the essays Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passions and Of the Standard of Taste (EMPL: 38, 226249). 42 For the characterization of Humes philosophy as a form of true metaphysics cf. EHU, 1.12.

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The Concept of Love in Modern Philosophy

dual dissolution of the false philosophy as well as the specific forms of religious enthusiasm and superstition which form the background thereof. As far as religion has its origin in an unhealthy proliferation of the emotions [especially of fear and hope (DNR: 183)], the cultivation of true philosophy will help to restore reasonableness and moderation in society. Yet, at the same time, Hume never forgets to warn his readers of an excessive estimation of the role that philosophy or the search for wisdom could play in the transformation of human nature. After all, human understanding is limited in its scope and force, and the passion for knowledge or love of truth becomes vain and powerless when the mind of the philosopher loses all contact with common life. In sharp contrast with Spinoza, Hume again and again voices a certain diffidence towards the very pretensions of philosophy, and even towards the outcome of his own true metaphysics.43 As he says in The Sceptic again:
Philosophical devotion... like the enthusiasm of the poet, is the transitory effect of high spirits, great leisure, a fine genius, and a habit of study and contemplation: But notwithstanding all these circumstances, an abstract, invisible object, like that which natural religion alone presents to us, cannot long actuate the mind, or be of any moment in life (EMPL: 167).

As the sceptical catharsis at the end of the Treatise of Book 1 reveals, the philosopher will in due time leave his closet and return to his friends, to dine, converse and have a game of back-gammon. Only when he thus keeps his emotional life in tune with a share of this gross earthy mixture can he return safely to his study to follow his philosophical bent of mind (T, 1.4.7.14). Humean wisdom consists, one might conclude, in accepting that it is impossible to transform ones own finitude and in the immersion in common life through reason and philosophy.

43 In the last section of An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume makes from this perspective a remarkable observation: Yet, I must confess, (...), that I cannot, at present, be more assured of any truth, which I learn from reasoning and argument, than that personal merit consists entirely in the usefulness or agreeableness of qualities to the person himself possessed of them, or to others, who have any intercourse with him. But when I reflect that, though the bulk and figure of the earth have been measured and delineated, though the motions of the tides have been accounted for, the order and economy of the heavenly bodies subjected to their proper laws, and Infinite itself reduced to calculation; yet men still dispute concerning the foundation of their moral duties. When I reflect on this, I say, I fall back into diffidence and scepticism, and suspect that an hypothesis, so obvious, had it been a true one, would, long ere now, have been received by the unanimous suffrage and consent of mankind (EPM, 9.13).

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